Yesterday, I got the question “why do you blog?” of course I had around a million answers to respond with. Then I realized that the reason the person asked was not to find out why I blogged but to see if there was any reason to why he should blog.
This got me thinking about what [...]
Archive for December, 2009
FB vs Twitter vs Bing vs Google: An Analzyis of 2009’s Trending Topics
Posted By Annelie Näs on December 25th, 2009
As always around Christmas, people, blogs and newspapers evaluate the last year, and of course publish the predictions of the upcoming year. One of the topics discussed has been the most used words on the different networks and I thought that I would take a closer look at this, and see what parallels that we can draw from this.
Do we discuss and research the same topics equally on the different networks? Or is it very different? How come there are these similarities or differences?
Google, Bing, Facebook and Twitter have all published statistic of different kind that shows what has been trending on each network. Thought the statistics is presented and research differently I still think that we can compare them at some level.
The Search Engines: Google & Bing
Here is the list that Google and Bing presented:
| Google* | Bing | |
| 1 | Michael Jackson | Michael Jackson |
| 2 | ||
| 3 | Tuenti | Swine Flu |
| 4 | Stock Market | |
| 5 | Sanalika | Farrah Fawcett |
| 6 | New moon | Patrick Swayze |
| 7 | Lady Gaga | Cash for Clunckers |
| 8 | Windows 7 | Jon and Kate Gosselin |
| 9 | Dantri.com.vn | Billy Mays |
| 10 | Torpedo Gratis | Jaycee Dugard |
*Google published different lists of trending search terms this list is the one the named “Fastest Rising (Global)”
Google and Bing are two of the biggest search engines out there. Despite that the most search words are not that similar. The obvious one is Michael Jackson that has been trending on all networks. Other than that Twitter is the only other word that trends on both. Interestingly enough Facebook is not even on the top 10 on Bing, which makes me wonder, who are the people who use Bing and doesn’t use facebook? Or, perhaps, is it more common to type “facebook.com” wrong when using Google as a search engine versus useing Bing?
On Facebook’s blog they choose to share the most trending topics, thus not individual words or term that was mentioned. This means that the deaths of both Michael Jackson and Patrick Swayze goes under the topic “Celebrity Deaths.”
Here are the 15 most mentioned subjects on Facebook 2009:
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Twitter has so far not published a post about the most mentioned words in general. Instead they a published a blog post called “Top Twitter Trends of 2009” about the most mentioned words in the following categories: News event, People, Movies, TV Shows, Technology, Sports and Hashtags.
I’m going to show you the results of only 4 of them, those that tend to be more discussed on the other networks; News events, People, Technology and Hashtags.
| News events | People | Technology | #Hashtags | |
| 1 | #Iranelection | Michael Jackson | Google Wave | #musicmonday |
| 2 | Swine Flu | Susan Boyle | Snow Leopard | #iranelection |
| 3 | Gaza | Adam Lambert | Tweetdeck | #sxsw |
| 4 | Iran | Kobe (Bryant) | Windows 7 | #swineflu |
| 5 | Tehran | Chris Brown | CES | #nevertrust |
| 6 | #Swineflu | Chuck Norris | Palm Pre | #mm |
| 7 | AIG | Joe Wilson | Google Latitude | #rememberwhen |
| 8 | #uksnow | Tiger Woods | #E3 | #3drunkwords |
| 9 | Earth hour | Christian Bale | #Amazonfail | #unaccetable |
| 10 | #inaug09 | A-Rod (Alex Rodriquez) | Macworld | #iwish |
A closer look at some of the words
It is interesting to see that Facebook seem to be discussed on Google but not on Bing. On Facebook itself it seems to be talked about as “fb” and on Twitter it does not top in Technology. Is this because it does not fall under the category technology, or simply because other technologies were more popular?
Google Wave & Windows 7
Another interesting thing was that Window 7 made the top list on Google and Twitter. But the Google product Google Wave did only make the list on Twitter. Although there is came in first. The same thing goes for Google Latitude which came in 7 on Twitter. Perhaps this has to do with the face that they sorted them in topics and thus it might not have reached the general top 10?
Swine Flu
The flu that has been in talked about around the whole worlds kitchen tables did not reach the top then on either Bing or Google, though it was highly ranked on both Facebook and Twitter. How come? Does this show a lot of talk and no facts? As you would Google for news etc. But talk about “rumors?”
People
No one can have missed the death of Michael Jackson, as this even tops the Swine flu discussions. But other than that people on the different networks seems to value talking about different people. Lady Gaga who even made her own spot in the Facebook top 15, compared to “celebrity deaths,” and got in 7th on Google. She did not even reach the people topic on Twitter. Where Susan Boyle, and I assume the link the video was mentioned a lot. On bing Farrah Fawcett is the second most Googled individual, probably due to her death this year aswell. Why did difference in people? Has it to do with the “crowds” on the different networks?
Tiger Woods
Looking through this words the name Tiger Woods caught my attention, since he was not a person that I considered to be that “discussed” up until a few weeks ago. Thus, I wonder if the constant growth of twitter-users help to get trending topics in the end of the year a bigger chance to get mentioned here, compared to the other networks. Or perhaps the Tiger Woods drama was just something that everyone could talk about. What do you think? Am I on to something? Or do you think that he as been mentioned all year around.
Your conclusions
What do you think? Can you compare the results like this, or is it too many other factors that has to be considered? Do you see any other parallels?
Posted in Annelie's Musings
Use Google Alerts to Receive an International Daily Update of Your Favorite Subject
Posted By Annelie Näs on December 22nd, 2009
Recently I have started to use Google alerts to track more and more subjects that I have different interest in. From the beginning I mainly used it to track the buzz around the company I have been working for but many more ways to use it. So, in case you only use it for that or any other one reason, I thought I would share how I use it.
The way I use Google Alert makes it become a daily digest with an international summary of my interest, kind of my personal newspaper. Here is a few ways to use it:
Tracking your personal or company brand
Track your name or the name of your company, so that you can read anything that is being said about you. This is good both to see what people are saying, but it also gives you the opportunity to quickly respond to things that are said. As an example this can help your customer service to catch unsatisfied customers and make sure that they will return in the future.
Track the company you want to work for
If you are looking to work at a particular company it can be great to track what is being said about them. That will give you an opportunity to get to know about their staff, customers and client. This knowledge could give you an advantage in an interview and before that it might help you find out if you are what they are looking for, or how your knowledge could help their business.
Research a subject you are interested in
Tracking everything that is being said about the thing you are interested in might be a lot if it is a broad subject. However, you can choice either to specify your interest or to choice to have the alerts “once a day” or even “once a week” so that your inbox doesn’t get flooded with updates. Personally I limited one of my interests by choosing to only follow it in Swedish, as it is a subject is a lot smaller in Swedish, so that is an opportunity to. Either way, by tracking you interest you will be really up-to-date with what is going on, all over the world.
How To: Use Long Urls to aviod Twitter Scams
Posted By Annelie Näs on December 20th, 2009
Lately, Twitter scams have become a big problem. Twitter scams are for example tweets containing links to sites that have viruses etc. Not only have normal internet users been fooled by these scams but also some of the pro-users have become victims.
This issue has developed along with the increased use of URL shortening services, such as bit.ly and tr.im
A while ago Bit.ly announced that they are making an effort to prevent this, since they are the default link shortening service for twitter.
To you avoid clicking on shorted links or checked, I recommend that you use a web browser add-on/extension that automatically shows the “real” link instead of the shorter version. This way you see the correct Url for the site that the link is taking you to, and it is easier to determine whether it is a site that you trust or not.
For those of you, who just occasionally click on shortened links, I recommend that you check the links at websites who lengthen links, such as LongUrl.com.
Here follow a list of plug-in for Firefox and Chrome, that will help you avoid the scams by using Long Urls:
Chrome
ChromeMUSE – Shorten and expand URLs with different shortening service providers.
Explode – Expand shortened URLs (e.g. TinyURL) with LongURL
Bit.ly – (shorten, share, and track your links (only bit.ly))
Firefox
LongURL Mobile Expander 2.0.0
Long URL Please 0.4.1 (Article about this addon)
Internet Explorer
Since I do not use IE, I have not tried any IE extension that solves this problem. Unfortunately search did not help me either, so my tips to those of you who use internet explorer are to use one of the universal services that does the same thing.
Check your URLs no matter what browser you use
In case you do not want to use any of these plug-ins you could always use LongUrl.com which is a universal way to show were the short links are taking you. It will take more time to check the links this was as you have to enter the website. But that might be time you’re willing to offer as you do not want the links to be leading you to the wrong place.
General Online Safety
Internet gives us a lot of opportunities and makes things easier, you can save both time and money with the internet. But as it develops faster than many out there has time to follow, I encourage you to stay updated on the news threats that emerge for you as internet develops, and hope that you encourage your friends and families to do the same.
The 3 Best Chrome Extensions and The Most Popular Notifiers
Posted By Annelie Näs on December 16th, 2009
About a week ago, Google Chrome released Extensions Beta with over 300 extensions. I have been using the extensions a while longer, with the developer channel, so I thought it was about time to share some of my favorites.
The notifiers that you cannot live without:
All the extension looks neat, although some of them still need some cleaning up. Especially the Facebook extensions layout could become better. The idea behind the extensions are simple, here is what piece Google said in their announcement:
“Extensions are as easy to create as webpages. Users can install and uninstall them quickly without restart, and extensions have a great polished look that fits in with Google Chrome’s minimalist aesthetic”
Three of my other favorites are extensions that change the “behavior” of the web browser.
Google Preview
The first on is GooglePreview, which gives you small previews of the pages in your google research. This sometimes speeds up searching even more as you can quickly see what the page looks like and if it is the one you are interested in. It is also great if you forgot the name of the site and want to find it, because hopefully it won’t have changed looks.
The only downside is that sometimes it cannot provide previews or it shows old previews, but hopefully this is something the developers are working on.
Docs PDF/Powerpoint Viewer
The second one is the Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer, which “automatically previews pdfs, powerpoint presentations, and other documents in Google Docs Viewer.” I like this, because it opens all the documents a lot faster than adobe reader would, which I enjoy. This is an extension that I really see potential in. It would be nice to be able to excel and doc files in it as well. Also I would enjoy being able to save the documents somewhere, so that they can easily be reached again, in Google docs for example. Either way if you want to speed up the time it takes to open a pdf, this is the extension you should use.
IE Tab
Last but not least I have the IE tab which opens a new tab, where you can view a page in Internet Explorer while still using Chrome. Might sound a bit confusing, but for all of those who have not changed to chrome as all web pages do not support it this extension is the solution. The plug-in has been very popular by Firefox users and seems to be for chrome users to as it is ranked 4th in amount of users already.
How to uninstall
However, though all these extensions are great, I hope that you think about what plug-ins you choose to install. Because they are unfortunately not as easy to uninstall as they are to install. But here is a guide to how you do it: “How To Uninstall Google Chrome Extensions.”
Enjoy!
Are you using Google chrome extensions? Which are your favorites?
Posted in Web development
How to do group assignments online: 5 tips for online collaboration
Posted By Annelie Näs on December 14th, 2009
A while ago I wrote about the pros and cons of online studies. Now, if you have made the decision to study online there are a few other things that I want to put on your message board. This time I will write about online collaboration, as it is not too obvious for everyone how to be a good team player in an online environment.
Sometimes you might know someone from the online class that you are taking and you might even have the opportunity to collaborate up with this person. However, usually this is not the case. Usually you have never met, never spoken and probably do not have the opportunity to meet offline as there is too many miles between you.
Thus going in to the collaboration you have do not know your teammates and you are working in an environment that is not optimal for sharing correct emotions. So what do you do? Here are some suggestions that will help your online group collaboration.
1. Introduce yourself and get to know your group. It is a lot easier working in the team when you know a little bit about the people you are working with. Their background might be useful for the assignment or the other way around maybe, a person you are working with has limited computer skill and might need some guidance on this. Knowledge about the skills of your team might help you plan your time during the assignment.
2.Take the time to learn about each other’s schedules. Online students tend to have a lot more going on alongside of their studies, such as work, extra classes, a big family etc. Therefore it is extra important to make sure that you understand what times and study methods that your group members have. Some might study mostly on weekends, while others do it during the day on the week. Knowing this is essential to do a group assignment where everyone does their part.
3.Plan your work before you begin. Planning is important for all assignments but when you study online it is even more important that you set dates and divide the tasks. As I mentioned before online students tend to have more commitments. Thus, working with set deadlines and assigned tasks is even more important. Especially important is it to plan time to review each other’s contributions to the assignments. Both because as you do not discuss things as frequently as in IRL group work and thus do not get as much feedback, but also since it is important that you learn all parts of the project as it is part of the class.
4.Consider making one in the group “last checker.” One of the most difficult parts of working online is that s you divide the tasks and write them individually without meeting is that you do not have the same group feeling. Thus there might be a lot of “I think” in the work, depending on the subject. Thus for some assignment is could be good to cut give one group member the last say on this. That is having just one person focusing on keeping the same “voice” during the whole assignment, who checks both grammatical, style, and word choice. Giving you the change to hand in a uniform document.
5. Consider sharing offline contact details. If someone doesn’t do their part it is important to decide if you can let that person take credit for the work or not. I have experienced cases where people have tried to excuses their lack of participation because they were sick, and the reason why did not contact us was because they did not have the energy to log on to the computer. Since it can be difficult rejecting this excuse, make sure that it cannot happen. Exchange phone numbers so you can call each other in case of sickness, a computer crash or whatever it might be.
I’m sure there are many smaller tips that would also help you a lot, but these basic thing have made online collaboration a lot easier for me.
Have you studied online? Do you have any tips to add to the list?
For further reading I recommend:
9 Great Document Collaboration Tools for Teams
3 suggestions to Facebook that would help people connect
Posted By Annelie Näs on December 13th, 2009
Track answers and clicks on notifications
When you get a notification on Facebook and check it, it automatically says to be “read”, even if you do not click on the link that is provided in the notification. You can always see the latest notifications in the box in the down right corner of the Facebook webpage, and if you press a list of “view all” you can see a long list of your latest notifications. Here you can also choice what notifications you want to receive.
Though I like these feature, I could see ways that it could be improved. Most of all I would like to see a “tracking system” like you have on your email. In this tracking system it could show which links you actually pressed on, and which wall posts that you responded to, or “liked.”
This feature would make it easier for you to check what you have responded to what you have not acted on. Similar to the function that Facebook email provides. So it becomes easier to remember to follow up on you Facebook correspondence. Because I think many like me many times just “check” their Facebook, and don’t respond to anything. This means that notifications are opened and many times forgotten about.
Suggestion: Add the features that are currently in the Facebook inbox, where you can see which mails you have responded to, and if what emails you have not read. The inbox also offers the opportunity to mark emails an unread which I think could work nicely with the Facebook notifications. The only difference would be that as long as you had seen the notification the red flag would go away, which the digits (which show the amount of unread email you have) do not.
This could look something like this:
Give a reason to the suggestions
When you log in to your Facebook and get on the home page, you have messages on the top the right column which suggests that you connect with people that you have a friend in common with or perhaps became a fan of a page that your friends are fans of. Lately this “message box”* also gives you suggestions on whom of your friends to connect with.
This was a feature I really saw potential in when it came and also used. Until I realized that it is not suggesting that you should connect with people you have not connected with in awhile, it suggests that you contact people that have not had much “action” on Facebook, for example; no one has written on their wall in a while, or people who have not completed their Facebook profile yet. Basically it is programmed to suggest that you connect with inactive users.
Example:
This probably benefits Facebook more than you, as they end up with more active users, if people help others to become more active. Sure, this might be nice, however; I think more people would use it, if it helped them as well. How about adding features that show when and how you last connected with the person that the box* suggests that you should connect with?
Suggestion: Give people more reasons to connect with friends they haven’t talked to in a while, by showing the date of the last correspondence. Or say “Lisa has wrote on your wall three times without getting a respond from you, maybe you should contact her.” This way, people would feel more of a need to connect to the suggested people, and perhaps even be thankful for reminding them, at least I would. If they the box does want you to connect with an inactive person says so “No one has written on Joey’s wall in three weeks, maybe you should change that?”
*With message box or box, I mean the automated suggestion generator.
Allow comments on event wall posts
On Facebook you are able to comment on statuses, pictures, albums, links, wallposts etc. Honestly, you can comment on almost everything. However, one the things I would like to comment on, you cannot. I’m talking about other people wall posts in events. Sure you could post on the same wall and hope that the person whose post you wanted to comment on checks the wall again soon. Or you can send an email to the person who posted the comment. However, neither of these alternatives seem very social to me.
Suggestion: Add the possibility to comment on the wall posts in events from people who you may or may not be friends with on Facebook. In that way it will be easier to comment and the person in question will receive a notification of you comment and your answer will be available to all the other people who will visit the event site.
Does your effective work affect your customers?
Posted By Annelie Näs on December 12th, 2009
Today I stopped by the Belgian Chocolate Store Leonidas. I was going to by a few gift boxes with fresh chocolate pralines for my grandparents, as they have never been to Belgium, and it is a part of the culture here. I remember the first time I went and bought chocolate praline stores here and how luxuries it felt to have them hand-pick the pralines, put them in the box and neatly wrap it up. Before I moved to Belgium I had never bought chocolate in this way.
Thus, because the fact that they give their customers this feeling of luxury I think that the buying process in the store is definitely part of what they are selling. They sell the experience to pick your own hand made chocolate pralines.
Imagine my disappointment today when I came in the store and they told me to buy a box that was already picked before I came in to the store, instead of letting me watch as they do it. The part that is even worse is that I asked for a mix box with less dark chocolate and alcohol filled pralines, which is not a generic mix box. But, I still got a finished mix box, which was already wrapped. I hope the boxes were created during the day, but as the boxes what not labeled with packaging date, I have no idea if I bought old chocolate. Therefore, it did not feel special at all to buy Belgian chocolate today, which actually felt more disappointing that one would have thought.
I’m sure that Leonidas did this because they wanted to be able to sell more during Christmas rush hours, when more people buy chocolate. Maybe they even managed to sell a few more boxes, but what does that matter when people leave disappointed? In the long run, they may actually lose customers by doing this, and then the extra business they generated won’t have mattered at all.
Thinking about it I am not even sure how much extra they can have made from this, they were still a lot of people working, who were standing around as they had nothing to do. The lines were long anyway, and I did not find out about the finished boxes until it was my time to order.
From this story I want to convey the message that before you make it easy for yourself, make sure that it does not affect your customers or their experience. This is perhaps even more important when you are in a market with a lot of competition like in the case of Leonidas.
So before you make it easy for you self at least think of the following:
- How much will I gain of it?
- What is the potential risk of the change?
- How does it affect my customers?
- Will this change be good in the long run?
A friendly reminder: Teach new internet users about online safety.
Posted By Annelie Näs on December 4th, 2009
I don’t know about you, but I know a lot of inexperienced internet users, who are just now beginning to try it out. If you think about it, and go up a few age groups I’m do sure you do too. Have you ever tried to help these people with their problems? And been annoyed when they did not learn to write in a website address in the first 30 minutes of trying? Probably.
I’m not writing to give you any genius suggestions on how to handle this problem; How to teach better, or to be more patient. But, simply to remind you that the most important thing, after they know the basic “how to’s,” is to tell them about internet safety.
Tell them to not give away their passwords, user names or bank account numbers to anyone. Explain how situations like this occurs and what to do when it does.
Because after all, the people who are victims for phishing attacks (like the one that Hotmail users faced in October) and others things are probably not the people who have used their computers for a decade. They are the people who have just started to be more comfortable with the use of the internet and isn’t as suspicious as they used to be. These users are probably also the ones who miss the article about the fact that their account info might have been stolen and thus should change their password. Or even worse should immediately block their bank account.
I hope this reminder will encourage you to take to time to call someone you care about to remind them of internet safety.
At http://www.getsafeonline.org/ you will find a few great tips on general safety online.
You can read about how to aviod phishing attacks here: 12 steps to avoid phishing scams
Posted in Annelie's Musings
Betagroup: Introducing the potential of Belgian Web Entrepreneurship
Posted By Annelie Näs on December 2nd, 2009
Tonight I went to my first meeting the Betagroup in Brussels. Betagroup is a community for people they have some kind of relation with web entrepreneurship or are “innovators of a new industry.” They connect and help people who want to create businesses, invest in business and people who have web related professions. Also, they provide a great marketing opportunity for their members. All this is done trough a blog, a LinkedIn group and IRL meetings. I haven’t figured out their visions yet, but the concept is great and has a lot of potential, as the group as 2000 members, and tonight at their 14 Betagroup meeting there were over 300 attendees.
The meeting is self was somewhat generic with some opportunities for networking before and after the presentations. Jean Derely, who is the founder of Betagroup, introduced the presentations. Tonight five companies presented their businesses or ideas Yaxo, iDiscover, Twoodler, Bebuzy, ErgoTools. However, I think the audience (atleast those I talked to) mostly saw potential in Yaxo and Bebuzy. You should take a look at them right away (or wait I few days until I have done some more research and will blog about it and then look). But, summarized Yaxo offers a service that you connect to your online store to have instant communication with salespeople. It might sound like something that is already on the market, but they have found some new spins to the idea. Bebuzy is still in Beta but is a very intelligent and interactive “yellow pages” of services. I especially liked all this because how well build it is and how much time it will save for both customers and service providers. This is definitely a site to be aware of if you live in Belgium.
IDiscover also had some potential, it a pda-game that they want museums to buy for student groups. It is based on the idea that you can combine; social activities and learning, museums and games. Which you accomplish by giving a group of students and individual pda during their museum visit, which gives them tasks and problems related to what the museum is showing. Thus, the student collaborative to solve the problems: it is a social and fun game where you learn about museums. Great idea, but they need a lot of money to scale it, because the Belgian market is not so big.
I think that the meeting presented a lot of potential business. But, I am still a bit confused about what goal is for Betagroup. Is the meetings only for networking? In that case, they need a bigger venue as the network was very non-flowing because of the small space (you might literally step on someone’s toes if you turn around). Or the mission is also for the entrepreneurs to help each other with for example, legal, technical, business regarded matters? In that case, maybe at least one presentations should be about “tips for future web entrepreneurs.”
All in all, great meeting point for web entrepreneurs, where I managed to meet some interesting people and to which I will definitely come back. But perhaps they should have an even clearer goal or make room for their purpose?
Update:
Mashable saw more potential in Twoodler than I did and posted this article: Twoodler: The baby toy that twitters
Posted in Web development
